


The Symmetry of That

by charlottechill



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Canon Character of Color, Canon Compliant, Canon Queer Character of Color, Declarations Of Love, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Joe's poetic language, M/M, Nicky's poetic too, Other, PWP without Porn, Sexual Humor, Team as Family, graphic but in a totally romantic way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:48:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26132188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottechill/pseuds/charlottechill
Summary: Nile’s face looked sour and annoyed. Andy’s looked amused.“What is it?” he asked.Andy smirked. “Joe’s amusing himself. Nile walked in on him.”--- OR ---The unsettling changes require careful attention. And the teasing of Nile.
Relationships: Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova & Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 43
Kudos: 395





	The Symmetry of That

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Megan Kent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/megankent/pseuds/megankent) for reading this several times, and to [ElephantofAfrica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElephantOfAfrica/pseuds/ElephantOfAfrica) for keeping me honest in Islam.

When Nicky returned to the safe house, he found Andy in the ratty chair while Nile paced in front of the television screen, dull static its only offering to the room. A paper sack in each arm, he used his boot to shut the door behind him and raised his eyebrows.

Nile’s face looked sour and annoyed. Andy’s looked amused.

“What is it?” he asked.

Andy smirked. “Joe’s amusing himself. Nile walked in on him.”

“Ah.”

“I apologized, all right?” Nile said.

She was clearly embarrassed. If he touched her dark cheek, he would feel the blush under her skin. “Privacy is mostly an invention of the modern day, Nile, or a privilege of the very rich.” He set the bags on the counter and went to the door of the other room. “I’ll talk to him.”

Andy snorted.

Nicky shrugged to himself. Andromache wasn’t wrong.

More than half of their lives had been spent in caves, on bedrolls in the open desert, or the tents of generous bedouins or Imazighen or Mongol tribes. When in great wars they had been packed into barracks with dozens of other men, sometimes crammed into ships with more. Even when a break from service afforded them better quarters, their Guard was too close and too familiar, and they often shared rooms, safe houses, hotel suites. He and Joe weren’t young lovers; their appetites weren’t those of new men. But when the spark ignited when the four of them shared a space, if they chose to fan it to flame they were more likely to cover themselves with blankets and turn away in the night, smothering their sounds in each other’s skin than sneak off like guilty children.

He didn’t knock.

It was as Andy said, though Joe sat with his back to the door, hunched over himself on the bed as if to hide a secret. His gray shirt was rucked barely halfway up his back. His pants still covered his buttocks, revealing very little skin, but his hand was clearly where it should be for making his pleasure.

“Joe.”

Joe didn’t answer and didn’t stop.

Nicky shut the door and padded over, heeled out of his boots and laid gentle hands to tense shoulders. The synthetic fabric that Joe had come to prefer felt slick and warm, not nearly so pleasant as cotton or skin. “Couldn’t wait?”

“Bored with the way you handle me,” Joe said.

The words might have surprised him on a different day, in a different century. But the two of them were out of step right now, with Booker gone and Nile here. Joe’s rage at Booker’s betrayal remained as sharp as a well-kept blade, while Nicky had forgiven the man in light of the penance he now suffered. And Nile’s very modern point of view on the world cast a pall on them even as it breathed fresh air and relieved them from the cynicism of age.

This was nothing they wouldn’t weather, but such changes could take them a moment, a month, a year, to adjust.

“Slipping, am I?” He tucked his knees on either side of Joe’s hips, wrapped his arms around his chest, and tugged gently until Joe relented and leaned back against him. He set his chin against Joe’s shoulder and stared down his body. “Let me watch you, then, to remember how you like it.”

Joe’s hand slowed and stopped and, while his weight rested against Nicky, he dropped his chin to his chest and covered his cock. Sighed.

Nicky eased his hands under the shirt fabric to scratch gentle nails through the hair on Joe’s chest. “Let me think,” he said, pretending great seriousness. “You can’t be shy. I have seen it once or twice, after all. You can’t want to fuck, or you’d have communicated in some way either rude and arousing or romantic and inspiring—either way one of us would be inside the other already and we wouldn’t be wasting time on conversation.”

“You are very crude.”

Nicky nuzzled the hair at Joe’s neck. “On occasion.” He continued. “You can’t be fuming about Booker, or you wouldn’t be here seeking relief.” He felt his lips curl into a smile. “Is that it? You miss Booker this much?” 

Joe elbowed him, but gently.

He kissed Joe’s neck, breathed in the familiar musk that let him sleep so soundly at night. “Nile doesn’t judge us. She embarrassed herself, I think. That’s all.”

“I don’t blame her. She’s young.”

“Then what, my love?”

Joe’s shoulder shrugged beneath his chin. “I miss you but you’re right here.”

Nicky had heard that once or a hundred times. Joe had been a good Muslim but he had been a virile man before their first meetings, their first deaths. His travels as a wealthy merchant had shown him many places and pleasures, men and women with whom he had indulged, despite the sin of it.

Nicolo, on the other hand, had been a page and a passing good horseman before he’d given himself to the priesthood, then given himself back to the pursuit of war. His earliest memories had been of chastity, virtue, truth-telling and honor. With his vows to God had come absolute celibacy and constant prayer. He had known so few accommodations to pleasures of the flesh that even after almost nine hundred years with Joe, sorrow could make him retreat, however briefly, to that solitary shadow of himself he had once been.

“My heart beats for you, Joe. My body stirs for you. My failings are a poor acknowledgment of your beauty and affection.”

“Don’t get mushy,” Joe said.

Nicolo sighed. “You know it is these changes. Nile seeing Quynh under the water. Booker being cast out. Andy….” He sighed again. There were no words. Andy had been with them almost as long as they had been with each other, and he was grappling with the knowledge that a day would soon come when Andromache the Scythian, as eternal to him as time, would return to dust.

Joe lifted his hand to hold Nicky’s, and Nicky saw that he had softened.

“I know,” Joe said. “I’m being selfish.”

Of all the words Nicky might find to describe Yusef Al-Kaysani, “selfish” was not among them.

“No. I was distracted.” He skimmed his fingers along Joe’s breastbone and belly and further, taking up his cock, the skin soft as flower petals.

“It’s not important,” Joe said, and he too sighed. “I don’t even know why I was annoyed.”

Nicky knew. In the way that he wanted Joe’s arms around him at night and no longer had to ask, Joe sometimes wanted the heat of passion to drive away the darkness of eternity—or the uncertainty of when the end for one of them might come. In the way that Nicky had become a shield between Joe and whatever might come through a door, Joe sometimes craved a shield from the reality of their situation. Immortal though they were, they were also human.

“It is always important.” He pushed off the bed to strip off his clothes, smiled when Joe cocked his head. Listening. They each had their ways.

When he was naked, Joe still hadn’t moved, so Nicky reached for the hem of his shirt and tugged, urging his arms up and the odd textile off his body. He rubbed his hands down Joe’s shoulders, pressed fingers firmly into muscle. Made himself known.

“Get up. Please, be naked. Make us one flesh as we are one soul.”

“You speak like the man who owns my heart,” Joe said, and stood. He stared into Nicky’s eyes for a long moment and his eyes alone said so much.

They had each done for the other many times over the centuries, but this was not a kindness or convenience. Their need was less of the body than of the spirit, no matter how the flesh professed it. He set aside his grief and Joe’s anger, their losses past and their battles to come.

Joe slipped his hand along Nicky’s neck, his fingers entwining themselves in Nicky’s hair. “I’m grateful that your savior, peace be upon him, commanded his followers not to worry about what can’t be changed. Because I couldn’t change my love for you even if it meant the whole of the earth.”

Nicky swallowed, as ever moved by the depth of Joe’s devotion. “You know I feel the same.” _God, if you ever existed, forgive us our good fortune and do not punish us for the blessing that is our love._

He leaned in for a kiss, reveled in the soft beard and softer mouth, the sharp intake of breath through Joe’s nostrils, the way they still thrilled for each other. Familiarity stole nothing from their pleasure and soon enough Joe had finally shed those unnatural pants and lay atop him, both of them hard, both of them open to the other, both of them present to nothing else. He spread his knees wider, made the way easier, threw his head back as Joe prepared him with gentle fingers and gentler words. Then the meeting of minds and hearts and flesh, the faint pain of entry, the catch in Joe’s throat when he whimpered.

Joe was beautiful. They were beautiful. No god could condemn such love.

They moved together as one, centuries of practice making the act a simple one: simple and profound, no part of them left untouched. With long practice came great skill, every movement and every touch an invocation of pleasure, an affirmation of their understanding each of the other. The look in Joe’s eyes, spilling over with desperate love, made Nicky’s throat tight even as they reached the brink and flung themselves over it together.

For long moments they lay entwined, bodies riding the heights as they breathed deeply, staring into each other’s eyes, Joe’s fingers carding through Nicky’s hair.

Joe licked his lips. “Love isn’t a big enough word, is it? I know so many languages, and none has created the word big enough to define this feeling that lives for you.”

Nicky blinked. “Don’t. You’ll make me cry.”

Joe nodded and dropped his head, his entire weight, onto Nicky. Into his shoulder he said, “I know you mourn Andromache. I know you mourn Booker’s absence. I ache for you.”

“And I,” Nicky said, fingers tight in Joe’s curls, “for you. I’m glad my handling doesn’t bore you after all.”

Joe snorted. “I say a lot of shit.”

They parted soon after to clean themselves and dress.

“Are you hungry?” Nicky asked. “I brought the makings of dinner back from the market.”

Joe grabbed his wrist. “In a minute. Nicky?”

He sounded terribly serious, for a man well-loved. “Yes?”

“Would you like to get married?”

The question surprised him. “Are you curious? Or are you proposing?” Nicky really couldn’t tell.

Joe said only, “We’ve had opportunities before, offers from people who shared neither of the faiths we have let…” he frowned, “lapse. But today? We could find a Lutheran, at least. If you wanted it.”

Nicky didn’t ask what had brought this on; it was the same thing that had brought on the untethered moods they both shared and held secret. The new guard arriving. The oldest of their guard soon to be gone.

He zipped up his jeans and looked around for his shirt. “If I thought it could bring us closer in any way, I would say ’yes,’ Joe. If I thought we had not already taken our vows a thousand times over—in battle, in death, in each other’s defense, in the marriage bed—I would say ‘yes.’ The only reason I would say ‘no,’ in fact, is for fear. We need not marry because we fear the changes to come.”

Joe shook his head and shrugged. “And that, my Nicolo, must be why it didn’t feel like a proposal.

“I might have been surprised if it were, without a ring or a betrothal gift. A flower, at least.”

Joe winked. “You’re smarter than you look.”

“Ah, thank you. I am touched.” He slipped his cotton shirt back on and combed his fingers through his hair.

“Maybe when Booker’s exile is over,” Joe said. “He can stand for you. Nile can stand for me.”

Nicky liked the symmetry of that. Cleaned and zipped and tucked away, he stepped forward for a brief kiss. “Ask me properly after we have taken Booker back. Though you know what my answer will be.”

Joe pulled his shirt back over his head. “Why do I have to ask you? You’re a man, and Italian.” He tucked in his shirt. “You could ask me.” He was smiling now, and the shadows in his eyes had disappeared.

“Yes, I could. I’d have to want to marry you though, and if you keep choosing this modern artificial fabric, why would I even want to be seen with you?”

Joe mocked dismay. “It breathes.”

“I have worn it,” Nicky said, and wrinkled his nose. “It sticks to the skin like it has been coated with mud.”

“Well, now you know why I buy it. So I’ll have clothes that you don’t borrow.” Joe chuckled.

Nicky measured the comment against the facts, surprised. The ploy did work.

“Go on,” Joe said. “You can start dinner while I open the wine and tease Nile. Accelerate her education.”

Nicky raised an admonishing finger, much too close, because Joe kissed it. “I see no reason for her to hear about how we choose to express our love or satisfy our urges.”

“Me neither,” Joe said and grinned like a shark, all teeth. “That’s why I’m gonna tease her. I wasn’t the one who opened the door and yelped like a wounded thing.”

Nicky snorted. There was no taming this man and for that he was grateful—for as much of eternity as they were given.


End file.
